I want to pick up this topic very briefly, because as we know even among lean athletes weight is a crucial issue of discussion all the year through. The gossip around training your metabolism to burn more fat is fairly noisy, controversial and not very profoundly based on evidence. This has got to do with the fact that reliably measuring parameters of energy consumption and moreover to measure which energy source is tapped is not trivial. The procedures are very time-consuming and possibly invasive (e.g. muscle biopsies), the results for the individual are volatile, and contribute more to statistics than giving you a personal advise. The data you receive from depend on the training schedule, the diet regimen and on the actual time of measuring. The results can therefore only give a rough guideline and vary from individual to individual and within the individual.
The energy use and loss follow the rules of macro-physics, at least we don’t know any better until today. The thought concept behind still seems to be applicable: you only lose weight, if your energy balance is negative regardless of the energy source your body uses. Of course, this does not indicate that you cannot train and optimize your metabolism. It only may say that low-intensity workouts don’t make you lose more weight than high-intensity ones. If you burn fewer calories than your intake may be then weight loss remains a dream, and weighing a shear frustration.
A well-trained body enters the zone in which mainly carbs are burned later than an untrained person
It is known that athletes have more effective fat burning capacities compared to sedentary individuals. This I think is easy to explain. Sedentary people are reaching the point, at which the energy contribution from carbs becomes greater than that from fat a lot earlier than well-trained athletes. This cross-over point (named by George Brooks, a very famous exercise physiologist) is relative to a person’s training condition. The conclusion is straight forward: If your body is well trained, you enter the zone in which mainly carbs are burned later than an untrained person.
Therefore workouts and increasing your muscle instead of your adipose tissue brings about burning more calories and more fat. Obese persons are often disappointed, that they don’t lose weight despite reducing the calorie intake. Maybe they don’t have the muscles that help them burn more fat? Therefore one advise among thousand others may be to work more on an intensity program than remaining in the cardio or fat burning zone as many coaches and machines 😉 in gyms recommend.
For figures and scientific details please, have a look on Ross Tucker’s series about exercise and weight loss.
Reference
Ross Tucker, in the Science of Sport blog.
